For some people, “visual storytelling” means photographs. For others, it means film or video. An epic movie such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy may spring to mind — and few would disagree with that as a fine example of visual storytelling.

What a great post this is because it really lays out all the best ways to think about, and implement, a visual storytelling piece.

A lot of people think visual storytelling is simply one photo or stringing together a bunch of pictures. Not so! And this post explains why -- and what you need to do to make a successful visual story. Like:

Include basic factual details You need more than one picture And know what the story is before you start

Get the rest of the 10 rules so you too can create impactful visual stories to share in your business!

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, foundations, individuals. This is part of Creating Media, our ongoing series designed to help nonprofits and other organizations learn how to use and make media.

With millions of videos floating around on the Web, I’d like to make the case today for a genre that has received far too little attention: digital storytelling.

Digital storytelling is a craft that uses the tools of digital technology to tell stories about our lives. Done properly, storytelling can be a powerful, evocative way of communicating themes and stories, often touching us in deeper ways than one-dimensional videos that rarely probe beneath the surface of people’s lives

James Scott: So one of the things we talk about a lot is empathy and how it relates to the arts. You believe it’s a necessary component, and a critical building block, in becoming an artist in the first place, right?

Jamil Zaki: Human beings are not the world champions of many things. We’re not big, strong, fast, or sharp (at least tooth-wise). But we are the world champions of understanding each other. In a way, art—and especially narrative art—is the greatest expression of that ability. Narrative is a way to embody lives and worlds we have yet to experience, and in almost all cases will never experience. In a way, it’s a type of empathy boot camp: living as many lives as possible without having to leave a single room.

I have always struggled with internal yearnings that feel at odds. To make art <-> To make a difference.

For years I would go back and forth. Doing work as a facilitator for organizations that made a difference alternating with time in the studio. I would make bridges between them when I could. Using experiential creative techniques in training. Building websites or making posters for organizations.

Infographics are visual representations of information, or “data viz” as the cool kids call it these days.

Here's a great article on how to create infographics, or tell a story using 'data viz.'

Translating data into a story is tough work and this article gives us some fabulous tips on how to do it.

Not a graphic designer? Don't worry -- as a business person the more you know about how to create a great data viz story, the better you can tell a graphic designer or graphic scriber what you want.

Another reason I like this article is because it actually mentions the need to create a storyline for your visual, and know before had what the key message is you are trying to deliver.

The storytelling points the article leaves out are the storytelling devices of metaphor, analogy, contrast, and sensory material that are critical to a story's and an infographic's success. These pieces are implied in the article, but need more direct discussion about.

Use this article as a great guide. And if you want more detail, go dig into "Visualize This" by Nathan Yau (although it can be pretty technical).

This post is written for journalists but is applicable for any business, entrepreneur, or blogger wanting to do more visual storytelling.

Here the author gives 10 rules for creating a visual story (you don't need a camera) that are really great. Once you've crafted your story with good basic storytelling skills, then follow the advice in this article to turn it into a visual story.

Last night I did an Image Center session with a friend who is going through my Getting Unstuck course. I had her do two images--one that shows where she is now and one that shows where she'd like to be....

As I develop new products I grab the people around me to test everything. A couple of years ago I was vacationing in Cabo San Lucus with my parents and I asked them to try out an exercise using a prototype of the VisualsSpeak ImageSet.

Often, when you get data that is organized by geography — say, for example, food stamp rates in every county, high school graduation rates in every state, election results in every House district, racial and ethnic distributions in each census tract — the impulse is since the data CAN be mapped, the best way to present the data MUST be a map. You plug the data into ArcView, join it up with a shapefile, export to Illustrator, clean up the styles and voilà! Instant graphic ready to be published.

...But sometimes the reflexive impulse to map the data can make you forget that showing the data in another form might answer other — and sometimes more important — questions.

Canadian scientists who specialize in learning, memory and language in children have found exciting evidence that preschoolers can improve their verbal intelligence after only 20 days of classroom instruction using interactive, music-based...

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